Short history of Jews in Transcarpathia - kukuruz.ch

Paul Robert Magocsi 

Short history of Jews in Transcarpathia 

� Paul Robert Magocsi 

Short history of Jews 

in Transcarpathia 

The Jewish presence in this region dates back 

at least to the sixteenth century, although 

their numbers were very small until the second 

half of the eighteenth century. At that 

time larger numbers of Jews began to arrive 

in the northeastern part of the Hungarian 

Kingdom from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 

north of the Carpathians. They 

were fleeing from pogroms associated with 

the Haidamak revolts in Ukraine and the 

political instability connected with the three 

partitions and eventual disappearance of 

Poland. 

Hungarian Times 

By contrast, the Habsburg Empire, at the 

time under the enlightened Emperor Joseph 

II, implemented an Edict of Toleration (1781) 

that eliminated many of the legal restrictions 

Jews faced in other European countries. If in 

1785 there were 2,000 Jews living in the 

Rusyn areas of Hungary, their number increased 

by 1850 to some 40,000 and by 1880 

to over 80,000. By the first decade of the 

twentieth century (1910) in those counties of 

the Hungarian Kingdom where Rusyns lived, 

the largest number and percentage of Jews 

lived in Maramorosh—66,000 (18 percent), 

followed by Bereg—33,700 (14 percent), 

Zemplyn—33,000 (10 percent), Uzh—17,600 

(11 percent), Sharysh—12,000 (7 percent), 

and Ugocha—11,800 (13 percent). The Jews 

who settled in Carpathian Rus’ were, like 

others in central and eastern Europe, Yiddishspeaking 

Ashkenazim. The vast majority 

belonged to the ultra-conservative Hasidic 

tradition, whose members were devoted followers 

of so-called miracle-working rabbis, 

and Carpathian Rus’ soon became home to 

powerful rabbinic dynasties. 

In contrast to other parts of Europe, the majority 

of Jews in Carpathian Rus’ lived in the 

countryside, where they owned and worked 

the land as small-scale agriculturalists engaged 

in fruit-growing, honey-making, and 

sheep-herding or were employed as woodcutters 

and rafters. Most were poor, and an 

estimated 30 percent were illiterate at the 

outset of the twentieth century. Aside from 

their native Yiddish, they communicated 

easily in Rusyn. It was largely the Jews’ socioeconomic 

status, so similar to that of their 

Rusyn neighbors, that encouraged equality 

and mutual respect between the two groups. 

This situation was to a degree destabilized in 

the 1890s, when a new wave of Jewish migrants—fleeing 

pogroms in the Russian Empire 

and joining others from Galicia where 

their socioeconomic status was being challenged 

by the successes of the Ukrainian cooperative 

and national movement—crossed 

the Carpathians and settled in Rusyn villages. 

These newcomers did not initially work the 

soil like their co-religionists already living in 

Carpathian Rus’, but instead established 

taverns, inns, and village stores and lent 

money to Rusyn peasants often at exorbitant 

rates. Consequently, Hungarian publicists 

(Miklós Bartha) and government officials 

(Ede Egán) viewed Jews as the source of the 

region’s economic woes. 

Bartha wrote an influential book, Kazár 

földön (In the Land of the Khazars, 1901; 

repr. 1939), which drew a distinction between 

the older, integrated Jewish communities 

and the newcomers from the east (the 

Khazars) who were allegedly the cause of the 

local populace’s economic hardships. Some of 

these new Jewish immigrants from Galicia 

(known in Yiddish as Galitsiyaner) moved on 

to Budapest and Vienna; others remained and 

quickly adapted to the local Carpathian environment. 

Despite the anti-Semitic tracts of 

Bartha and others, as well as examples of 

anti-Jewish trials (the 1882 blood libel case in 

nearby Tiszaeszlár being the most infamous), 

the favorable relations between Rusyns and 

Jews remained basically undisturbed. It is 

noteworthy that Carpathian Rus’ is one of 

the few places in central and eastern Europe 

where pogroms never took place. 

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Czechoslovak State 

With the collapse of Austria-Hungary in late 

1918, and the incorporation of Subcarpathian 

Rus’ and the Prešov Region into 

Czechoslovakia, Jewish life was to be significantly 

influenced by the democratic and secular 

environment promoted by the new state. 

The demographic and socioeconomic status 

of Jews did not change much. In Subcarpathian 

Rus’ their numbers increased to 

102,500 (1930), which represented 14 percent 

of the province’s population. Over twothirds 

still lived in rural areas and over half 

supported themselves through manual labor 

(as agriculturalists, shepherds, wagon workers, 

artisans). On the other hand, Jews comprised 

more than 20 percent of the inhabitants 

in as many as 37 small towns and cities. 

They were particularly dominant in places 

like Solotvyno (44 percent), Bushtyno- 

Buzhchyns’kyi Handal (36 percent), Irshava 

(36 percent), and in Sighet (38 percent), 

which after the war was incorporated into 

Romania. However, Mukachevo (43 percent 

Jewish) with its suburb Rosvygovo (38 percent) 

remained the largest community as well 

as the cultural and spiritual center of Subcarpathia’s 

Jewry. 

Under Czechoslovak rule Jews were for the 

first time recognized as a distinct nationality, 

with 95,000 claiming themselves as such out 

of 102,000 of the Jewish faith (1930). The 

government also encouraged secular education, 

which was gratis in state schools. In the 

pre-World War I era a small percentage of 

the community, especially urban Jews, attended 

Hungarian-language schools; most, 

however, received their education at the Jewish 

kheyder (elementary schools), the yeshiva 

(higher schools, or academies for the study of 

the Talmud), or the beis medresh (houses of 

religious study for adults). These Jewish 

schools were supported by the local communities, 

and some, such as the yeshiva headed 

by Rabbi Josef Meir Weiss in Mukachevo 

gained a reputation for excellence in Talmudic 

studies that attracted students from other 

communities. Under Czechoslovak rule the 

number of Jewish students in Hungarian 

schools declined further, and students from 

the Orthodox religious schools began to attend 

in ever-increasing numbers state-run 

Rusyn-language and later Czech-language 

elementary and secondary schools. By the 

mid-1920s only 7 percent of the estimated 

13,000 Jewish student population attended 

the seven Hebrew-language elementary 

schools and one gymnasium in Mukachevo (a 

second was opened in Uzhhorod in 1934). 

Tradition and Modernism 

Aside from the secular incursion of the 

Czechoslovak state into traditional Jewish 

society, the Orthodox Hasidic majority was 

challenged by a rapidly growing Zionist 

movement that made its first appearance in 

the Subcarpathian region after World War I. 

The movement was led by Hayyim/Chaim 

Kugel (1897-1966), a native of Minsk in the 

Russian Empire who had gone to study in 

Prague in 1920 and who arrived in Mukachevo 

soon after. The Zionists promoted 

the need for modern education conducted in 

Hebrew, which was intended to prepare 

young people for their ultimate goal, emigration 

(aliyah) to Palestine, that is, the ancient 

Jewish land of Israel (Eretz Israel). They also 

adamantly rejected the Hasidic life-style, 

which they considered to be reactionary and 

superstitious. In response, the Orthodox castigated 

the Zionists and their institutions, 

such as the Hebrew gymnasium in Mukachevo, 

which one Hasidic rabbi described 

as “a place from which come out heretics 

pure and simple who deny the Torah.” 

The Hasidic-Zionist conflicts spilled over into 

politics. During the last years of Austro- 

Hungarian rule Hungarian-speaking Jews 

living in urban areas were attracted to the 

left-wing socialist movement. Several played 

an active role in the 1919 revolution of Béla 

Kun that created a Communist regime in 

Hungary and Soviet Rus’ka Kraïna (Armin 

Dezso, Herman Fejér/Feier, Ene Hamburger, 

Béla Illés, Erno Seidler, Moszes Simon), and 

most joined the International Socialist and 

Communist parties in Subcarpathian Rus’ 

after the province was united with Czechoslovakia. 

As supporters of an ideology that 

espoused atheism, these individuals more 

often than not rejected or even denied their 

Jewish heritage. The Subcarpathian Communist 

party did, however, continue to attract 

Jewish voters throughout the interwar years. 

The Czechoslovak era also witnessed the 

creation of specifically Jewish parties. In 

1919 an all-national Jewish party/Židovská 

strana was founded by Zionists in Prague. Its 

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leading activist in Subcarpathian Rus’ was 

Hayyim/Chaim Kugel, and the party was 

supported by press organs published in both 

Hungarian, Zsidó néplap (1919-38), and 

Yiddish, Yudishe Shtimme (1929-38). Although 

the Zionists were able to attract a 

portion of the Orthodox Hasidim, especially 

among the younger generation, their party 

was able to elect its own deputy from Subcarpathian 

Rus’ to the Czechoslovak parliament 

(Kugel, in 1935) only after it joined in 

an electoral coalition with the Czechoslovak 

Social-Democratic party. 

Initially, the Orthodox Jews eschewed direct 

participation in electoral politics and instead 

established a Jewish Central Bureau, recognized 

by the Czechoslovak government, 

whose political leaders were to be designated 

by the influential rabbis. When, however, the 

Zionists began to solicit support among the 

Jews in rural areas the Orthodox leaders 

created their own Orthodox Jewish 

party/Židovská strana orthodoxní, headed by 

Sándor/Alexander Kroó (1885-19??). The 

Orthodox party at times entered into a coalition 

with the Czechoslovak Agrarian/Republican 

party (although it never had 

its own deputy in the national parliament); at 

other times it campaigned independently in 

local and municipal elections, supporting 

autonomy for Subcarpathian Rus’. With regard 

to voter preference in general, the largest 

percentage of Jews, like Rusyns, supported 

the Communist party. 

Aside from their problems with the Zionists, 

the Hasidim were deeply divided by internal 

conflicts caused largely by personal rivalries 

among their charismatic and authoritarian 

rabbis, each of whom felt obliged to defend 

the interests—and righteousness—of their 

respective dynasties. Among these were the 

Spinka Hasidim headed by Rabbi Josef Meir 

Weiss (1839-1909) and his son Isaac/Eizik 

Weiss (1875-1944) in Mukachevo and the 

Sziget-Satmar Hasidim led by Rabbi Joel 

Teitelbaum (1886-1979), based in Satu Mare 

just across the border in Romania. But the 

most passionate feuding took place between 

the region’s most powerful rabbi, Hayyim 

Eleazar Shapira/Spira (1871-1937) of Mukachevo, 

supported by the Yiddish-language 

newspaper Yidishe Tsaytung (1927-??), and 

Rabbi Issachar Dov Rokeah (1854-1927), a 

World War I refugee from Belz in Galicia, 

who in 1918 settled and soon attracted a 

large following in Subcarpathian Rus’. A 

bitter rivalry for control over the region’s 

Hasidic community continued between the 

two men until 1923, when Rabbi Spira succeeded 

in convincing the Czech authorities to 

expel his Belz rival from the country. 

Destruction 

Despite the achievements in education and 

increased Jewish participation in political life, 

the Czechoslovak regime was not able to 

improve in any significant manner the poor 

economic status of most Jews. Their economic 

conditions, like those of the Rusyns, 

only worsened during the 1930s, following 

the negative impact of the worldwide economic 

depression on Subcarpathian society. 

This decade also witnessed the growth of 

small Rusyn-owned businesses and cooperatives 

which challenged the previous Jewish 

dominance of retail trade. The resultant economic 

rivalry led at times to boycotts and to 

verbal friction in the press. Finally, Jews became 

concerned with the growth of the 

Ukrainian national movement, which reached 

its culmination during the few months of 

Subcarpathian autonomy (October-March 

1939). The presence during that time of émigré 

activists from the Organization of Ukrainian 

Nationalists (mostly from Galicia), the 

increasing authoritarian nature of Carpatho- 

Ukraine’s government, and the sympathy of 

some of its leaders toward Nazi Germany did 

not bode well for the Jewish population. 

With the destruction of Czechoslovakia in 

March 1939 and the annexation of Subcarpathian 

Rus’ and a part of the Prešov Region 

(as far as Snina) by Hungary the status of 

Jews steadily worsened. The Hungarian government 

immediately made a distinction between 

local Jews and the “aliens” from the 

East; eventually, the latter included those 

who had arrived in the region after 1850. 

Subcarpathia’s Jews were also subject to 

Hungary’s anti-Jewish laws (1938 and 1939), 

which placed restrictions on employment 

(including exclusion from the civil service and 

armed forces) and on access to schools. Subsequent 

decrees (1942) deprived religious 

communities of their legal status and provided 

for expropriation of Jewish-owned 

farms and forest lands. In response to this 

ever-worsening situation, young Jews began 

to flee the region. Some went to western 

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Europe, eventually reaching France and Britain 

(like the future British publicist and 

newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell (Ludvik 

Hoch from Solotvyno) or to Israel. Others 

crossed the Carpathians into what after September 

1939 was the Soviet Union, where 

they, with fellow Rusyns, were promptly 

arrested and imprisoned in the Gulag until 

their release in 1943 to join the Czechoslovak 

Army Corps fighting alongside the Soviets. 

Hungary’s policy of legal restrictions was 

gradually replaced by one of physical expulsion. 

The first stage occurred in July 1941, 

when “alien” Jews (many of whom had only 

recently arrived as refugees from former Poland) 

as well as some Subcarpathian Jews, 

together numbering about 20,000, were 

forcibly deported to eastern Galicia, which 

had just been annexed to Nazi Germany. 

Almost immediately German SS units killed 

over half of them at Kamianets’-Podil’s’k. For 

most of the rest of the war the Hungarian 

government under Miklós Horthy resisted 

deporting its “own” non-alien Jews, but after 

the German army entered Hungary Budapest 

was forced to comply with Nazi demands for 

deportation. In April 1944 Subcarpathia’s 

Jews were rounded up and placed in temporary 

ghettos established (in several cases in 

brick factories) in Mukachevo, Uzhhorod, 

Khust, Vynohradovo/Sevliush, and Berehovo. 

Over a period of three weeks (May 15-June 

7, 1944) virtually the entire Jewish population 

(116,000 as of 1941) was deported to 

Auschwitz, where they were killed in the gas 

chambers upon arrival. In Slovakia some 

Jews were deported as early as 1942, although 

those living in the Rusyn-inhabited 

Prešov Region remained until the spring of 

1944, when they, too, were sent to the 

Auschwitz death camp. With regard to the 

reaction of the local Rusyn population to the 

deportations, there are reports of intervention 

to save Jews as well as reports of cooperation 

with the Hungarian authorities. 

After the Holocaust 

At the end of World War II it was estimated 

that no more than 20 percent (25,000) of the 

Subcarpathian Jews had survived. They included 

those liberated from concentration 

camps, those who hid in Budapest during the 

last months of the war, and soldiers who had 

fled to the Soviet Union and served in the 

Czechoslovak Army Corps. Many returned 

home, but only briefly, to what was about to 

become Soviet-ruled Transcarpathia. Others 

emigrated to western Europe (like the future 

Nobel-Prize winning author Elie Wiesel from 

Sighet), to the United States, and to Israel 

(including the Holocaust historian Livia 

Rothkirchen from Vynohradovo/Sevliush). 

The Satmar Hasidic Rabbi Teitelbaum settled 

in New York City (the Williamsburg section 

of Brooklyn), where his followers continue to 

maintain a close-knit community, as do the 

followers of Rabbi Shapira/Spira of Mukachevo, 

under the direction of his grandson, 

Rabbi Moishe Rabinovitch, based in the Boro 

Park Section of Brooklyn. Those who emigrated 

to Israel eventually set up religious and 

cultural centers, such as the Maramorosh 

House/Bet Maramarosh in Tel Aviv. The 

largest number of returnees took advantage 

of a supplemental clause in the Czechoslovak- 

Soviet Treaty of 1945 that allowed Jews from 

the former Subcarpathian Rus’ to opt for 

Czechoslovak citizenship. Between 1945 and 

1947 about 18,000 did so and were settled 

for the most part in the far western regions of 

postwar Czechoslovakia (see Optatsiia). But 

even they did not remain there for long. After 

the Communist coup of February 1948, all 

but about 2,000 Subcarpathian Jews left 

Czechoslovakia for Israel (1949-1950). In 

effect, the vibrant Jewish community that had 

once existed in Carpathian Rus’ came to an 

end following the deportations and Holocaust 

of 1944 and the postwar emigration. In 

the late 1940s and 1950s Jews from other 

parts of the Soviet Union settled in Transcarpathia 

(an estimated 7,000 in 1979), but 

most of these, too, left for Israel or the United 

States during the wave of Jewish emigration 

from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. 

At present there are perhaps about 2,600 

Jews left in Transcarpathia. Within today’s 

independent Ukraine this small community, 

made up exclusively of post-War II Jewish 

immigrants from various parts of the former 

Soviet Union, has since the late 1980s experienced 

a revival. In 1993 a Jewish Cultural 

and Enlightenment Society was founded. It 

operates Sunday schools in Yiddish and Hebrew 

and sponsors events promoting Jewish 

culture. The Khesed Shpira Benevolent Fund 

publishes in Uzhhorod a Russian-language 

monthly magazine about Jewish life in present-day 

Transcarpathia. 

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Bibliography: 

František Friedmann, “Židovská národní menšina na 

Podkarpatské Rusi,” Národnostní obzor, IV (Pra- 

gue, 1934), pp. 185-192 and 269-277 

V. Suk and Chaim Kugel, “Židé na Podkarpatské Rusi,” 

in Jaroslav Zatloukal, ed., Podkarpatská Rus (Bra- 

tislava, 1936), pp. 128-137 and 149-151; 

Jean Mousset, “Le problème juif en Russie subcarpathi- 

que,” Affaires étrangères, VIII, 8 (Paris, 1938), pp. 

501-512; 

Yehuda Erez, ed., Entsiklopedyah shel galuyot, Vol. VII: 

Karpatorus (Tel Aviv, 1959); 

Randolph L. Braham, “The Destruction of the Jews of 

Carpatho-Ruthenia,” in idem, ed., Hungarian- 

Jewish Studies, Vol. I (New York, 1966), pp. 223- 

236; 

Aryeh Sole, “Subcarpathian Ruthenia, 1918-1938,” in 

The Jews of Czechoslovakia, Vol. I (Philadelphia 

and New York, 1968), pp. 125-154; 

Hugo Stransky, “The Religious Life in Slovakia and 

Subcarpathian Ruthenia,” and Aryeh Sole, “Mod- 

ern Hebrew Education in Subcarpathian Ruthenia,” 

in ibid., Vol. II (1971), pp. 347-389 and 401-439; 

Livia Rothkirchen, “Deep-Rooted Yet Alien: Some 

Aspects of the History of the Jews in Subcarpathian 

Ruthenia,” Yad Vashem Studies, XII (Jerusalem, 

1977), pp. 147-191; 

Herman Dicker, Piety and Perseverance: Jews from the 

Carpathian Mountains (New York, 1981); 

Tamás Majsai, “A korösmezei zsidódeportálás 1941- 

ben,” in A Ráday-gyujtemény évkönyve, Vol. IV-V 

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scarpathia,” in Peter J. Potichnyj and Howard As- 

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pp. 305-328; 

Peter Konya, Dejiny Židov na východnom Slovensku 

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No. 7 [23] (Tel Aviv, 1998), pp. 147-165. 

…………………………………………………………... 

Source: http://www.rusyn.org/pop_jews.htm 

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